


the climb

by alljuststars (allthelight)



Category: Gallagher Girls Series - Ally Carter
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Hill Climbing, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:41:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29593647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthelight/pseuds/alljuststars
Summary: "It’s been five months since Abigail Cameron has waltzed into his life and he still very surprised by how this person, a young CIA agent, has managed to turn it on its head. His life was well-ordered until she came along and spun it all around, and, if he’s honest, he’s still learning to appreciate the difference."Abby and Townsend go hill-climbing. It goes as well as anyone could imagine.
Relationships: Abigail Cameron/Edward Townsend
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	the climb

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Gosh, it's been such a long time, hasn't it? I promise you I didn't mean to let it get away from me as much as it did but oh well. I've had this written since like September but I forgot all about it and I thought it was about time to post it :p 
> 
> I hope you're all keeping safe and well and that you're 2021 has gotten off to as best a start as it could have! Hope you enjoy!

“I can’t believe you talked me into this.” Townsend adjusts his rucksack, breathing heavily as he checks his watch. “This was not a good idea.”

“And I can’t believe you’re so unfit,” Abby calls from a way in front of him. “And I think you’ll find that this was your idea.”

“You wanted to sightsee,” he grumbles, taking large, deliberate strides in an effort to catch up, ignoring the twinge in his chest.

“ _You_ were the one that suggested this hill.”

“You were the one that said you wanted the best view.”

Finally he comes abreast of her and takes a long drink from his water bottle. It’s a cloudy day, and there’s a breeze that feels so wonderful on his back. It’s been a while since he’s climbed a hill, and unfortunately it’s clear to see. That would be grating in itself, but it’s made even more unbearable that Abigail Cameron has bested him at something he’s been doing since he was a child.

“Maybe we should have done something else,” she teases. “You seem quite out of breath.”

The change in her inflection at the end of her statement to mimic him is almost as annoying as the statement itself. “Well, I’m still healing,” he says through gritted teeth, “from the time that you shot me.”

Abby’s mouth opens wide. “Don’t say it like that. I didn’t shoot you like that.”

“Like that? What is that supposed to mean?”

“You know,” she says, gesturing to his chest. “As though I did it to hurt you.”

“You knew it would hurt me,” he tells her accusingly, but then sees an opportunity to strike. “Or perhaps you didn’t. Maybe you don’t know how a bulletproof vest works.”

“Shut it,” she hisses. “Or we can go to the range right now and you can see what happens when I really do aim to hurt you.”

“Oh Abigail,” he sighs. “You make it so very easy.”

She rolls her eyes epically. He’s almost surprised she doesn’t fall over. “Come on. Exercise is good for bruised ribs.” She strolls ahead of him easily, as though she’s climbed this hill hundreds of times before.

“I think your knowledge of field medicine might be slightly out of date,” he huffs, but increases his strides to come beside her again.

It’s been five months since Abigail Cameron has waltzed into his life and he still very surprised by how this person, a young CIA agent, has managed to turn it on its head. His life was well-ordered until she came along and spun it all around, and, if he’s honest, he’s still learning to appreciate the difference.

He can’t pinpoint the exact moment when the utter frustration and infuriation he felt in her presence turned into something more. Perhaps there wasn’t a singular moment, a point on the line where he went from wanting to push her in front of a train to realising that he would jump in front of it for her. It would be too simple, too normal. Neither of them are that.

They are almost at the top of the hill he has brought them to. Patchwork fields sprawl in every direction around them, and the city and their real lives seem so very far away from them now. Edward Townsend isn’t a fan of pretending – it doesn’t do anyone any good – but if he were, he could pretend that they are different people from who they are, and there’s a very different sort of future coming to them than the one that is.

“You were right,” she says without looking at him when he reaches the summit only seconds after her.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” He cups his hand to his ear. “Please repeat.”

“Don’t.”

“Well the wind made it so I couldn’t hear.”

“I thought you had exceptional hearing,” she says, changing her inflection on the last words again, but he does his best not to rise to it and she gives in. “You were right.”

“I always am, but what was I right about this time?”

“The view.” She gestures down the fields below them. “It’s some view alright.”

“Yes,” he says, but he’s looking at her. “Some view indeed.”

She turns around at that exact moment and catches him in the act. He doesn’t turn away. Her smile lights up her whole face and she shakes her head as though she can’t believe it. “You’re impossible sometimes.”

“Good,” he tells her. “An important asset of any operative is to be impossible sometimes.”

“Sometimes isn’t nearly half as fun as being impossible all of the time,” she says, eyes lighting up.

“Something which you are definitely an expert in,” he affirms for her. “It will be a weight off my back to get rid of you.”

A weight off his back but a heavier weight in his heart, which doesn’t really belong to him, not anymore. Of course he would never say it, hardly even dares think it, but it’s most definitely not where it usually resides.

“I’m sure you’ll be singing and dancing as soon as my plane takes off.” She looks him up and down. “Well, maybe on the inside.”

“Only when you’re gone, Abigail. Only when you’re gone.”

She brings out her water bottle and takes a drink, rolling her eyes at him. “You’ll miss me and you know it.”

“Oh will I? I think I’ll rather enjoy ridding my flat of all the belongings you seem to have accumulated in the last five months.”

It’s not even a lie. Ever since she became a permanent guest, the pile of her things had only grown exponentially and the place is barely recognisable.

“Oh no, I’m leaving that all behind. A gift, so you don’t forget me.”

Gifts, to Edward Townsend, are nice things that the recipient might find useful. Things like a nice pen, a patterned tie, or a utility belt with multiple attachments. Gifts are not multiple different kinds of hair conditioner, exotic jars of coffee, or fluffy purple blankets that, though admittedly comfortable, are not exactly his style.

“As if I could ever forget you,” he tells her, surprised by his candour. “You are entirely unforgettable.”

“Why, Edward Townsend, was that a compliment?”

“Maybe,” is all he says, and slips his sunglasses on so she can’t see his eyes.

They are everything and yet they are nothing. When she leaves him a week from now there will be no trace of what they have except in the impressions they have left on one another.

“It’ll be weird to leave.”

He turns to her, but she’s not looking at him. She’s looking out over the fields, seeing something he cannot in all of the green below. He doesn’t say anything.

“I know it’s only been like five months, but I’ve gotten used to MI6.”

“Really?” He asks, intrigued. He would have thought she’d be aching to leave, to get back to the country and the agency that’s so familiar to her. That’s what he would feel in her position.

“Yeah,” she shrugs. “It’s nice.”

He raises his eyebrow.

“I mean your weather sucks and your food portions are tiny and you drive on the wrong side of the road but apart from that, it’s pretty nice. I get you now.”

“From just that you ‘get’ me?” He frowns, wondering why she just can’t speak plain bloody English.

“You didn’t make sense before. You were just this guy in a sharp suit who looked like he hadn’t grown up anywhere.”

“Is that an insult or a compliment?”

“Neither. It’s just a fact. You looked like you could have been made in an underground lab. Seeing all this-” she gestures to the great open space around them “- and working with you for the last five months, puts it all in perspective. You have roots here, even if you don’t want to admit it.”

He narrows his eyes at her, unsettled but not entirely put off by the direction the conversation is going. “Do I?”

The look she cuts him makes him smile. “Your apartment is like something out of a catalogue. You have _photos_ on your walls.”

“I’m surprised you noticed,” he remarks drily.

“I noticed everything,” she says, not even missing a beat. “You have a movie collection in that drawer under your TV, even though you’re not even there to watch them. Your fridge is actually half decent for guy standards, not to mention spy standards. You have candles!”

“I’m a spy, Abigail, but I’m not a wild animal. I do like my home to smell nice.”

“That’s just the _point!_ You call it home.”

“Yes,” he says, still unsure of the point she is making. “You have yours as well. I’m sure I’d find it just as unsettling as you clearly find mine.”

“It’s not the same,” she says quietly, and he has to strain to hear her over the wind. “You look forward to going home.”

It’s not as simple as she thinks it is, but she is right. He does enjoy coming back to London when he’s been away from it. He’s a good spy, he can do his job anywhere, but London is where he belongs.

He knows Abby’s demons, has felt her shiver in her dreams as she lies in his arms. He’d take them away from her if he could, soothe her soul and brighten her smile, but he’s a spy, and he knows that it just doesn’t work like that. Your demons are your own, for good or bad, better or worse. They make you who you are. You can’t erase them, and you shouldn’t. That’s the way it is.

“I do,” he acknowledges. “But I also keep on leaving. Are you telling me you don’t have something like that?”

Something passes over Abby’s face, the opposite of a shadow. The remnants of a pleasant memory. “Once,” she nods. “Once I had something like that. Not anymore.”

“You know,” he says, forcing his tone to be lighter. The effort to be casual is killing him. “I have it on good authority that a home isn’t a pre-fabricated place. It’s where you make it. Therefore, if you had it once, you can have it again.”

The words sound stiff and disjointed coming out of his lips, so unlike him it is to say something like this, but the discomfort is all worth it when he sees her face light up, that familiar twinkle coming back into her eye.

“Wow, Townsend, that was unusually sentimental coming from you.” She raises an eyebrow. “Someone been teaching you on the side?”

“My secretary,” he says and nothing more.

She snorts. “Well I know who your secretary is and I highly doubt that sort of stuff came from her but fine, keep your secrets.”

“A man must have some.”

“And a woman must, too.”

“Of course. Especially one who used to be a Gallagher girl.”

The topic of her school always comes up between the two of them at some point, usually turning into a debate. Townsend doesn’t really feel up for having one just now, but he knows challenging her will take away that awful, haunted look in her eyes.

“Ah, see, that’s where you’re wrong.” She leans in to him as if imparting one of her secrets. “There is no such thing as _used to be._ Once a Gallagher girl, always a Gallagher girl.”

The secrets of a sisterhood he will never hope to understand. “Well, that explains everything about you, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, Townsend, you have absolutely no idea.”

And suddenly there’s an urge in his chest to ask her to stay, which he knows is just ridiculous. She can’t stay, any more than he can. She belongs to the Americans and the CIA and those easy-going kinds of people who say one thing and do another. He belongs here, with the British and MI6 and those kinds of people who count the amount of cornflakes in the bowl before adding a predetermined amount of milk. They work now, but only because it’s temporary. Anything permanent they balk from, and they would fall apart as easily as a bridge made of melting snow. It’s perhaps the one thing they have in common.

So instead of telling her to put roots down here, with him, he gestures down the hill and asks her, “Would you like to get some lunch?”

Abby nods and then looks down at her clothes, which have someone inexplicably become covered in mud. “Would you mind if we went back to your place and showered first?” And then she grins wickedly. “Well I mean _we_ don’t have to, but if you happen to find yourself dirty…”

“Alright,” he cuts her off before she goes any further, and the fond feeling, though still there, threatens to be outshone by a familiar kind of irritation. He doesn’t even think about what he’s actually saying when he says, “Come on then. Let’s go home.”


End file.
